After being leaving the military service after 12 years working in the communications and technology field I was hired by this company as a field computer technician. Prior to accepting the position I confirmed with my new manager, the same individual who hired me, the two locations that I would be working in. I purchased a house that was centrally located to the two cities where I would be providing support and to the company which is located in Macon, Georgia. Prior to hiring I made it very clear that I could not travel more than 10%.
While employed by the company I put 5,000 miles on my car in an eight week period of time and incurred $3,000 worth of expenses on my credit card. My first paycheck was late by a day with no notice given... The check just didn't show until the following day. A few weeks later the same situation occurred, only this time it was a direct deposit late by a day. A co-worker who had been with the company for a couple of years told me to get my expenses in order as the company wasn't certain where the money was going to come from to pay the employees.
The company's method of providing support on several situations was to send me to a customer's location (the support was already paid for by the company they were complaining that they were not getting the support that they paid for) with very basic, and mostly incorrect, information on what the problems were the company was encountering. On three occasions I was sent to the site without all required networking equipment (which I then had to either purchase or tell the customer that it would arrive at a later date). Many of the customers told me horror stories about previous technicians and the fact that the company had little regard for the quality of service that they received.
I received virtually no training on the systems that I would be working on... And the company had no network policies or up-to-date diagrams. My past experience was the only thing that prevented these customers from having another poor experience.
After my first week the company immediately put me on the road for 5 days out of the week. During my entire period of employment (prior to my decision to leave the company) I never once saw the two locations I had been told that I would support. Not only did the company require me to travel, up to several hundred miles a day, they did not provide a company credit card or vehicle. The tool kit they provided was for telephone systems rather than computer networks and I was forced to get my manager's permission to go through the supply closet to put together a basic network/computer repair kit.
Three weeks after I was hired I filed my first expense report (for around $1,000). The company's policy was to re-imburse the employee the first pay period following the filing of the report (meaning I would receive an expense check the week after filing). Three weeks later I had not received a check and was still incurring expenses. I had to inform the company that I could not place any more travel expenses on my personal credit card until I received re-imbursement and the amounts were now billed as due by the credit card company. The company president hand wrote a check just so that I would travel to a new site that same day to provide support.
While travelling with other support personnel I heard and was told many stories about how no one had received expense checks for over a month, how the company was in serious financial difficulty when they hired me, how people without certifications providing the same support I was were let go (an area covered by 11 technicians was now covered by 3). I also met one salesperson who had not been paid in three months but was still employed by the company. Another technician had not received one expense check from the company in two years and figured the company owed him around $25,000.
I had two incidents where I arrived on site and the client asked what I was doing there and informed me that no one had provided information that I would be arriving and that they had meetings to attend to first before they could show me their equipment. Although the clients were upset with the company they were happy enough with my work to ask for me to return on several occasions during the following weeks.
During the eight weeks I was with the company, four employees quit. I sought another position and was hired by a technical support company four weeks later. The day I put in my two weeks notice (not required in the state that I work in but a courtesy to the company) the company released me... in fact I was the only tech on site to provide support for a school system and had to tell the client that another tech who was also scheduled to be providing support was late but would eventually arrive and that I had put in my two weeks notice and was released that day. I was then required to make the three hour drive to my company to drop off their equipment. I also dropped off my second outstanding expense report. After I left the company I contacted the headhunter who placed me with the company (he had also been a member of the same unit I was with while in Saudi Arabia during the war so he knew my work habits) and informed him that I had left the company. He then informed me that my manager had contacted him a few days previously and had informed him that she planned on releasing me due to the fact that I refused to travel (which was not true as I had said that I could travel up to 2 days per week, twice the amount I had agreed to prior to my hiring). Her planned release of me also just happened to coincide with being under the 90 day period before the company would have been required to pay a placement fee. My headhunter was suspicious with the manager's comments since he had worked with me previously and contacted TechLan's prior HR director (who had also quite). The information provided by that gentleman convinced the placement company to conduct no further business with TechLan (something to the effect of their business practices crossing the legal line on several points).
Three months after I departed the company I still had not received $1,200 in personal expenses the company owed me. To get the company to pay I had to send a certified letter to the company president stating that if payment was not received in 7 days a claim would be filed in the county claims court. Two weeks later I received my expense check.
Bottom line issues with this company:
- Late pay with no notice to employees
- Little notice (2 days) of where employees would be providing support (over a 2 state area)
- Late or no reimbursement for employee expenses
- Unnecessary support trips to clients just to allow the company to bill them for the support (equipment for support had not yet arrived)
- Poor support provided to companies with the emphasis of support being to new business rather than supporting old clients who had already paid for support.
- No technical orientation to client systems for new employees
- Technical manager would make comments to the effect that "we don't need customers like that" when the customer would complain about the support they were receiving
- Incomplete or incorrect technical designs provided to technicians for customer support requiring technicians to engineer on site (when they were not paid to do so)
- Technical manager would tell lies to technical support personnel to keep them motiviated to work (up to the point they quit)
- Technical manager would lie to clients to keep them happy, or at least to keep stringing them along
0 comments